Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
Speaker 2: the worst people in all of history. And this week
Speaker 2: we are about to start part two of our episodes
Speaker 2: on the former richest man in the world, H. L. Hunt.
Speaker 2: And when we left him off, his dad and his
Speaker 2: beloved older brother had just died. He had been saved
Speaker 2: by a magical prostitute after proving supernaturally good at sex.
Speaker 2: And he's in Arkansas starting a farm, you know, using
Speaker 2: the money he'd inherited and the money he'd taken from
Speaker 2: fleecing all of his friends at poker. He is going
Speaker 2: to try to make something of himself. So by the
Speaker 2: start of nineteen twelve, our boy, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, had
Speaker 2: opened his very own cotton plantation. Again, this is probably
Speaker 2: inspired by the fact that his father had kind of
Speaker 2: talked endlessly about how beautiful the South was and how
Speaker 2: great cotton farming was. Unfortunately, he's going to learn a lesson,
Speaker 2: which is that cotton farming sucks ass, and it's really
Speaker 2: hard to like get rich doing unless you own a
Speaker 2: bunch of people who you can make work for you
Speaker 2: for free.
Speaker 3: Right, History talking about lesson very.
Speaker 2: Clearly, they're like, yes, yes, when you have to like
Speaker 2: do your own work and pay people to help you
Speaker 2: sucks way harder, way harder. And he's going to learn
Speaker 2: that over the next few years. Right. He's also going
Speaker 2: to learn that the cotton market itself is incredibly volatile, right,
Speaker 2: and so from year to year, your harvest might not
Speaker 2: be worth what you put in to make it. And
Speaker 2: also like bad weather can fuck you, you know, if you
Speaker 2: don't have enough of a nest egg to survive it. Right,
Speaker 2: It's just a very hard lifestyle. And this is where
Speaker 2: the fact that he starts, he starts farming and immediately learns,
Speaker 2: oh shit, it's really hard to make money cotton farming.
Speaker 2: This is going to show evidence of one of his
Speaker 2: most valuable traits, right, which is that he is not
Speaker 2: dissuaded by failure. A couple of times in his life
Speaker 2: he's gonna lose everything, like three different times he loses
Speaker 2: everything and like makes it back, you know, to ultimately
Speaker 2: get crazy rich. And if I were writing a linked
Speaker 2: in post to appeal to a bunch of wannabe founders
Speaker 2: and ceo boot liquors, itight in there, right, Hunt you know,
Speaker 2: bankrupted himself three times and he you know, never let it.
Speaker 2: Never never let it, you know, convince him to stop.
Speaker 2: He never backed down. He just grut right back on
Speaker 2: the horse and made the money up again. You know,
Speaker 2: President right, right. It is true that like confidence in
Speaker 2: the face of failure is important, you're certainly not going
Speaker 2: to make it as an entrepreneur unless you can't. You
Speaker 2: can handle some failure. But it's a separate characteristic of
Speaker 2: Hunts that's going to contribute a lot more to his
Speaker 2: future's success than the fact that he's fine with failure.
Speaker 2: The thing that actually keeps him going through all these failures,
Speaker 2: and particularly through the failure of his cotton business, is
Speaker 2: that he also owns a casino. Right, that's all they
Speaker 2: want to do with it. Then the attitude, I mean
Speaker 2: casino is putting it a little far. It's not like
Speaker 2: a full on Vegas casino. Obviously those don't exist yet.
Speaker 2: But he owns a gambling din right. An article that
Speaker 2: Anito Davis wrote for EBSCO notes that Hunt opens a
Speaker 2: gambling parlor right alongside his cotton plantation. He starts them
Speaker 2: both basically at the same time, and while the plantation
Speaker 2: doesn't really work out financially, the gambling. Din is a
Speaker 2: good investor, right.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know what slavery does, suck, Let's get.
Speaker 2: Gambling gambling though nothing problematic about that. Baby put it
Speaker 2: all on red. So one constant of Hunt's early life
Speaker 2: is that when he suffers a reverse and like loses
Speaker 2: all of his money, he's able to It's weird because
Speaker 2: before I learned this, I would just be like okay,
Speaker 2: but he lost all his money. How does he a
Speaker 2: year later have like eight thousand dollars to invest in
Speaker 2: this new business. Well, it's because he keeps gambling, and
Speaker 2: whenever he runs out of money, he just gambles until
Speaker 2: he makes more money because he's like it's a superpower
Speaker 2: for him. Like he just as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: anytime the man sits down at a table, he walks
Speaker 2: away with money, right, And if you have that, it's
Speaker 2: like fucking Lieutenant Commander Data, right, Like he's just gonna
Speaker 2: win when he sits down to play cards. So every
Speaker 2: time he goes bankrupt, he gets his money back because
Speaker 2: he's like a gambling freak. Right. In nineteen fourteen, he
Speaker 2: marries Lyda Bunker, and the newlyweds get to work, having
Speaker 2: the first of what will ultimately be six children. Their
Speaker 2: first child is a girl, Margaret. They have her in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifteen, and two years later they have their first boy,
Speaker 2: who he names Haroldson Lafayette Hunt. Technically he's the third right.
Speaker 2: Lida calls him Hassie. She also calls her husband Hassie.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of confusing in the book at this
Speaker 2: point because you'll hear the tow Sill will refer to
Speaker 2: both of them as Hassie. I'm only going to call
Speaker 2: his son Hassie. When I say Hassie, I'm talking about
Speaker 2: our Harold Hunt, the future richest man, the world's kid.
Speaker 2: Now he is going to cheat constantly on his wife.
Speaker 2: He is cheating on Lida as early as nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: probably earlier than that, but at least by that point,
Speaker 2: and he is not subtle about it. So Lda has
Speaker 2: to deal with hearing endlessly about like, oh, your husband
Speaker 2: sure has an eye for the ladies, huh, which she
Speaker 2: does not like, does not make her feel good. His
Speaker 2: tell is like the way that she can tell he's
Speaker 2: cheating on her is he'll point out a lady in
Speaker 2: town to be like, you know, she's a really good
Speaker 2: person and that means lighta is like, okay, so he's
Speaker 2: sucking her or he's going to try to fuck her. Right,
Speaker 2: sometimes it just means that he's at the house or
Speaker 2: somebody right right right.
Speaker 3: It really shines through you know, what a.
Speaker 2: Great personality she's got me just like casually bringing it
Speaker 2: up to your wife and yeah, it's one of those
Speaker 2: things where like she's never're okay with it. She kind of,
Speaker 2: I think accepts it just because the world is the
Speaker 2: way it is. She doesn't have any there's nothing she
Speaker 2: can not much she can do about it, right, but
Speaker 2: it makes her sad. And also his kids can tell
Speaker 2: that he's cheating on their mom and they don't like it.
Speaker 2: Like his first two kids especially are going to really
Speaker 2: hate him for the fact that he is just he
Speaker 2: makes their mother miserable. He treats her so badly. I
Speaker 2: really I cannot exaggerate what a bad husband he is.
Speaker 2: Hunt suffers ups and downs over the first three years
Speaker 2: he spends farming, but World War done, World War one
Speaker 2: finally does. His cotton plantation in the cotton market collapses
Speaker 2: kind of not long after the outbreak of war, and
Speaker 2: then in nineteen seventeen, his farm gets flooded out, and
Speaker 2: just kind of the mix of these two factors together,
Speaker 2: he can't keep it going anymore. He has to give
Speaker 2: up somehow. He goes from this from his you know,
Speaker 2: going bankrupt and his farm failing in nineteen seventeen to
Speaker 2: investing in his first oil well in nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 2: And there's a little bit of mystery as to how
Speaker 2: he gets his first oil well. Here's how that pro
Speaker 2: oil and gas industry website Oklahoma Minerals describes this part
Speaker 2: of his career. So this is like the this is
Speaker 2: like the this is the approved propaganda line that Hunt
Speaker 2: wanted people to believe. With a borrowed fifty dollars, he
Speaker 2: began trading oil leases, employing a strategy of buying and
Speaker 2: selling that almost simultaneously to profit without significant capital investment.
Speaker 2: This approach allowed him to amass considerable wealth in a
Speaker 2: short period. Right, So basically he's just doing the kind
Speaker 2: of trading people do on computers now, but with his
Speaker 2: super smart brain, and he doesn't need much money. It's
Speaker 2: just a borrowed fifty dollars, you know. He's able to
Speaker 2: turn that gradually into enough of a fortune to start
Speaker 2: buying his own oil fields. That's not quite accurate. That is, like,
Speaker 2: it accurately describes one of his strategies, which is that
Speaker 2: once he gets going, after he has this first successful
Speaker 2: oil field, he'll start buying and selling leases. And he
Speaker 2: is doing this thing where he's like doing it in
Speaker 2: such a way that he doesn't have to actually put
Speaker 2: much money down, right, because he's just kind of switching
Speaker 2: shuffling assets around. It's a little bit of like a
Speaker 2: show game type deal. But this does leave out something
Speaker 2: important about how he got his first oil well, and
Speaker 2: to describe that, I'm going to go back to his
Speaker 2: FBI report. From the FBI quote, he was reportedly a
Speaker 2: professional gambler who won an oil lease in a card
Speaker 2: game and is alleged to have operated prostitution activities in Arkansas.
Speaker 2: So this is something you'll find first off, it's not
Speaker 2: just a gambling den. He's also a pimp, right. That's
Speaker 2: especially I think that he gets more into that as
Speaker 2: the farm fails. He's like, well, crime will make money
Speaker 2: for me, And he uses the proceeds of both gambling
Speaker 2: and prostitution in order to make the money that he
Speaker 2: invests in oil fields. And it's very possible. We don't
Speaker 2: know entirely. If it's that he literally won his first
Speaker 2: oil field in a card game, that was a rumor
Speaker 2: and it seems very possible. But if he didn't win
Speaker 2: his first oil field in a card game, then he
Speaker 2: bought it with the proceeds from crime right, And I
Speaker 2: think it's probably true. He probably won his first oil
Speaker 2: field in a card game and then invested in other
Speaker 2: leases and got into the trading leases game with money
Speaker 2: he made from crime right. I think it's probably a
Speaker 2: mix of those. But this guy has to become a
Speaker 2: criminal to get rich, right, That's not emphasized enough in
Speaker 2: the hagiographies of him. But like he's he's a he's
Speaker 2: a pimp, you know.
Speaker 3: So he's gonna do all of this and then end
Speaker 3: up becoming like a.
Speaker 2: Far right, super right, super right wing out the hypocrisy's
Speaker 2: religious right guy. Initially, Yeah, he's it's very much a
Speaker 2: hypocrisy thing. But like all these guys, Yeah, anyone whose
Speaker 2: whole thing is like attacking and wanting to like harm people,
Speaker 2: using the state for violations of a moral code is
Speaker 2: always in violation of the moral code. They are trying
Speaker 2: to push on other people. One way, or the other.
Speaker 2: When you dig enough, you find it out right, that's
Speaker 2: just as far as I am convinced a pretty universal
Speaker 2: truth with these these kinds of assholes. I found an
Speaker 2: article from the Nation from nineteen sixty four. The author
Speaker 2: of that article claims the explanation that he gambled to
Speaker 2: get his first oil field got into print for the
Speaker 2: first time in nineteen fifty in a British newspaper, but
Speaker 2: it has been repeated many times since. Hunt denies it all,
Speaker 2: And I don't know what the truth is here. Whatever
Speaker 2: the truth, Hunt is going to continue operating gambling establishments
Speaker 2: for the next couple decades. He makes a fortune on
Speaker 2: the Arkansas oil boom and is said to have been
Speaker 2: worth six hundred thousand dollars by the time he's twenty five,
Speaker 2: which you know, by the standards, like if you turn
Speaker 2: that into modern money, he's a multimillionaire pretty much by
Speaker 2: the time he's in his mid twenties. Now, he's going
Speaker 2: to lose all of that money not long after this
Speaker 2: bill make even more back. Right, He's not what you'd
Speaker 2: call a good father at any point in time, especially
Speaker 2: in this period.
Speaker 3: I can imagine all that cheating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the cheating. He gambles constantly instead of he
Speaker 2: doesn't like spend time raising his kids. Like when he
Speaker 2: has free time when he's not working on the farm,
Speaker 2: he's gambling, right. And then when he eventually he's gambling
Speaker 2: or he's speculating on leases oil field leases. Right, but
Speaker 2: he never he never just has downtime with the kids.
Speaker 2: He's always gambling. Right. During the early years before he
Speaker 2: leaves Arkansas to pursue oil fields in Louisiana and then Texas,
Speaker 2: his kids tell regular stories of him just being gone
Speaker 2: all the time and like mom need to find someone
Speaker 2: to watch them when she had to do something because
Speaker 2: he's playing poker, right, And she hates him gambling. She
Speaker 2: thinks that him gambling is the root of all of
Speaker 2: their problems. Now, to be fair, she's not right, Like
Speaker 2: she blames him gambling on them going bankrupt like two
Speaker 2: or three times, and he goes bankrupt because of the
Speaker 2: legitimate businesses, like first because of his farm, and then
Speaker 2: I think like a couple of times as he's not
Speaker 2: quite bankrupt, but he loses a lot of money on
Speaker 2: like oilp gambling is a really reliable way for them
Speaker 2: to make money or at least, I should say. The
Speaker 2: card gambling is not what is bad for their finances.
Speaker 2: His gambling on oil speculation fucks them over a couple
Speaker 2: of times, right.
Speaker 3: But his ego is fed by the gambling. And that's
Speaker 3: the thing too, It's like that makes them reinforce it.
Speaker 3: He's the most special and what makes it feel like, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can go out and sleep with whoever I want
Speaker 3: to do whatever because I.
Speaker 2: Can just exactly.
Speaker 3: The rule.
Speaker 2: Yeah pockets. Yeah, So he takes all of his money.
Speaker 2: There's a couple of occasions where he'll just like take
Speaker 2: all of the money and like leave his wife with
Speaker 2: the kids nearly destitute for like a year, and just
Speaker 2: go down to another state to speculate on oil fields.
Speaker 2: So she does like, the kids don't like. This is
Speaker 2: a scary time for the kids. They don't know if
Speaker 2: he's ever coming back, and neither does she, right, and
Speaker 2: he doesn't like I don't think he makes it clear
Speaker 2: that he's coming back. I think he's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go see what I if I can make a fortune.
Speaker 2: And he's kind of like, and if I die out
Speaker 2: there or whatever and leave you guys destitute, well that's
Speaker 2: how it goes.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been doing this since I was twelve
Speaker 3: years old. Guys, don't worry about.
Speaker 2: Right, And like the time, by the time, he's worth
Speaker 2: six hundred grand at twenty five, he could have like
Speaker 2: retired and put all of that into you know, a
Speaker 2: couple of safe investments or just you know, like fucking
Speaker 2: bonds or whatever, and lived and supported his family comfortably
Speaker 2: for the rest of their lives and like been a father.
Speaker 2: He chooses to then gamble all of that money again
Speaker 2: and leave his family. He does not need to. He
Speaker 2: has a point where he's like, you could choose to
Speaker 2: be a father and raise your kids and you would
Speaker 2: all be wealthy for the rest of your lives. And
Speaker 2: he takes all of that money and puts it all
Speaker 2: on black and loses it and is gone for like
Speaker 2: another year or so to make it back, right, Right,
Speaker 2: So this is not good for his.
Speaker 3: Family, and I'm sure he in the back of his money,
Speaker 3: he's like, listen, I'm not bothering you guys. I'm not
Speaker 3: harassing you about how much breast milk you guys are getting.
Speaker 3: So why should he be upset?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm giving you nobody wants their dad around. It
Speaker 2: sucks da and yeah, like his wife blames all of
Speaker 2: this again on like the poker, but he is she
Speaker 2: is right that like his gambling is what's destroying the family.
Speaker 2: It's just his gambling on oil wells is what's destroying
Speaker 2: the family. Because he again, they go bankrupt a second
Speaker 2: time in the twenties because of all this for the
Speaker 2: book Kingdom, he gave no thought in the world to
Speaker 2: security for his family. Right, that is accurate, And that's
Speaker 2: also how his wife and his first couple of kids
Speaker 2: see him. Right, is he does not give a fuck
Speaker 2: about us. He is willing to gamble all like our
Speaker 2: happiness and our survival entirely because it thrills him. When
Speaker 2: his oldest son hassee turns eight, it's become a parent
Speaker 2: that he has inherited his father's intellect. Hassie is incredibly bright. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: he's also the one who's most hurt by his father's
Speaker 2: complete neglect to scene rights. Hassie felt personal rejected by
Speaker 2: this strange man who entered his life only now and
Speaker 2: then without warning. This man had named him after himself,
Speaker 2: had given him his looks and quick intelligence, then apparently
Speaker 2: decided his son was not quite up to snuff right,
Speaker 2: So that's very much how Hassee sees what his dad
Speaker 2: is doing is like he named me after himself. He
Speaker 2: clearly wanted me to be his heir, and then I
Speaker 2: must have failed him because he wants nothing to do
Speaker 2: with me.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's so sad. It's like he's he's just repeating
Speaker 3: the exact same cycles of harm and like I'd like
Speaker 3: psychologically it's interesting, but just as like a human being,
Speaker 3: like you're a dick. Stop being a dick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't stop. Don't do that to your kids again.
Speaker 2: If you I kind of think if you wind up
Speaker 2: getting lucky enough that you have like a windfall that
Speaker 2: allows you to never work again and support your kids forever,
Speaker 2: you kind of have a responsibility to like be a
Speaker 2: really involved parent at that point and maybe stop gambling incessantly.
Speaker 2: You know, you could start a business and like you know,
Speaker 2: or you have some small investments, but that's the point
Speaker 2: at which you should make your family a priority.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: You've succeeded, you know, you don't need to keep doing this.
Speaker 3: You have to choose a struggle like either be broken
Speaker 3: present or be rich and nice, Like you can't be
Speaker 3: both mean and then not present and then always messing.
Speaker 2: With Buddy, like a big struggle. In nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 2: he abandons his family yet again to speculate on oil
Speaker 2: fields in Florida while he's down and want to I
Speaker 2: want to specify it. That's Florida, the state, not flow Rda,
Speaker 2: the musical sensation. Always there's confusion every week I talk
Speaker 2: about those.
Speaker 3: It's important to get these things right.
Speaker 2: A lot of people know flow Rida but don't know
Speaker 2: that there's a state that's named after him. I just
Speaker 2: want to make that clear. So while he's down in Florida,
Speaker 2: he meets a waitress, Franni a Tie, who helps him
Speaker 2: find a plot of land to gamble on near Tampa.
Speaker 2: It's like he thinks there might be oil, and I
Speaker 2: think it winds up being there, winds up being oil there.
Speaker 2: But he spends months down in Tampa, you know, searching
Speaker 2: for more deals, working on that deal, and hanging out
Speaker 2: a lot with Frannia Tie. With this waitress, right, she's
Speaker 2: a wanna be musician. She's like a singer, And so
Speaker 2: he gets really into writing musicals. He convinces himself that
Speaker 2: like he's a great writer, and in fact that like, oh,
Speaker 2: all these other writers all these professional writers are idiots, Like,
Speaker 2: I bet because I'm so smart, I could be the
Speaker 2: best playwright ever if I just devoted some time to it.
Speaker 2: So he like becomes convinced he's going to be like
Speaker 2: the biggest thing on Broadway. He like goes to a
Speaker 2: show on Broadway once around this period of time, and
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm going to make the best musical that's
Speaker 2: ever been made.
Speaker 3: Has he ever been to New York Like he's.
Speaker 2: Been once, Yeah, he's been once. He saw he sees
Speaker 2: a show on Broadway. That's what convinces him he's going
Speaker 2: to be the greatest musician or the greatest playwright of
Speaker 2: all time. And so for a while he gets really
Speaker 2: into that, and he like writes a bunch of songs
Speaker 2: that sounded terrible, and they're primarily songs for Frannia, right,
Speaker 2: because he's in love with her at this point. He
Speaker 2: marries her on Armises Day nineteen twenty five. Now, but
Speaker 2: you may note he never divorced his first wife, nor
Speaker 2: did he break up with her, nor did he tell
Speaker 2: her that he was done. Frannia, by the way, does
Speaker 2: not know she's that he's cheating. She has no idea
Speaker 2: he has another wife. He does not tell her he
Speaker 2: has a wife and multiple children. He's lying to her too,
Speaker 2: She's not does not bear any responsibility here. She thinks
Speaker 2: she's met a guy and fall in love with him,
Speaker 2: and he marries her and they start having kids together.
Speaker 2: He buys her a house, and he just starts raising
Speaker 2: a second secret family in Florida will ultimately have four
Speaker 2: children Jamaican.
Speaker 3: I can say that. I'm sure.
Speaker 2: A lot of people do that.
Speaker 3: I know, but it's just like one one neglective family.
Speaker 3: One neglected family's not enough. Let's you have two two.
Speaker 2: I can't really double down on my family neglect. Look,
Speaker 2: two neglected families makes a non neglected family. That's the
Speaker 2: way it works, right, If you neglect enough families, it
Speaker 2: loops around to you being a caring father.
Speaker 3: Oh, just like a numbers game. It's like his gambling.
Speaker 3: Someone's gonna have to like me.
Speaker 2: Right right, I'm going to eventually find a family I
Speaker 2: actually want to be there for. You know, Statistically, he's
Speaker 2: like gambling, Just keep getting, keep getting new cards, keep dealing.
Speaker 3: Wait, So, just to clarify, how many children does he
Speaker 3: have with the first wife.
Speaker 2: Ultimately he's going to have like fifteen, he has six
Speaker 2: I think with his first wife and four with Franny.
Speaker 2: I Ultimately, over the course of his life he has
Speaker 2: like fifteen kids.
Speaker 1: It's too many.
Speaker 2: Ew And again this is bigamy. He's bigamously married. Now
Speaker 2: this is a crime. You're not allowed to do this
Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty because he also lied to the government
Speaker 2: right about not being previously married. In nineteen thirty, he
Speaker 2: takes his money and he moves to East Texas, where
Speaker 2: he meets a fellow named see him Joiner. So now
Speaker 2: he has abandoned both of his families. He meets a
Speaker 2: man named see him Joiner. He's another oil speculator. Not sorry,
Speaker 2: not a speculator. Joiner is one of these guys I
Speaker 2: forget the term for it, but he's like he's like
Speaker 2: a prospector for oil wells. Right. So Joiner identifies some
Speaker 2: land that's like, I think there's oil on this land.
Speaker 2: This is like I think a lot of it, right,
Speaker 2: And this well's name is number one, Daisy Bradford. Joiner
Speaker 2: is like a legend in the oil well prospecting business.
Speaker 2: This is a big deal. Guys like this who are
Speaker 2: like really skilled withoth the geology and stuff to like
Speaker 2: find well. Yeah to like because this is the whole
Speaker 2: oil boom relies on guys like this going out and
Speaker 2: because they don't have a lot of the technology we
Speaker 2: have today, so they're kind of looking at like the
Speaker 2: geology and whatnot, and like, where do I think there's
Speaker 2: going to be oil? Because it costs a lot of
Speaker 2: money to like drill to prove that there's oil and
Speaker 2: a property right, So the guys who are best at
Speaker 2: identifying places that they think are worth drilling and have
Speaker 2: the highest success rate are worth a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And Joiner is one of the best of these guys,
Speaker 2: and he picks out this space that becomes the oil
Speaker 2: well Number one Daisy Bradford. Hunt buys the rights to
Speaker 2: this oil well. Because that's how guys like Joiner make it.
Speaker 2: They're not running the wells themselves. They like they find,
Speaker 2: they speculate, they find it, and then they like buy
Speaker 2: a bunch of acreage that they think is a good
Speaker 2: place for an oil well, and then try to find
Speaker 2: someone else to buy it and actually like prove their
Speaker 2: like make the well right. That's kind of how the
Speaker 2: business works. I'm YadA YadA ing a lot, but Hunt
Speaker 2: buys the rights to this well, and he leases four
Speaker 2: thousand surrounding acres from ce him Joiner, So he doesn't
Speaker 2: own this land, he's like leasing it and basically buying
Speaker 2: the rights to exploit the well. So he and Joyer
Speaker 2: are in business together. Initially, this proves to be a
Speaker 2: really wise move because number one Daisy Bradford becomes the
Speaker 2: largest producing oil field on planet Earth for years. This
Speaker 2: is the number one oil field on the planet. Right,
Speaker 2: that is going to make a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Now he's going to be so annoying, he's going to
Speaker 3: be so.
Speaker 2: He's kind of getting This is going to really allow
Speaker 2: him to be a lot more of a piece of shit.
Speaker 2: And we'll talk about that. But you know who else
Speaker 2: is a piece of shit?
Speaker 1: Nope.
Speaker 2: I love our sponsors here. They are killing me and
Speaker 2: we're back Sophie. Sophie didn't notice that. So it's fine.
Speaker 2: We're good. We're good, We're happy. Everything's fine.
Speaker 1: I am unhappy.
Speaker 2: Fine, Sophie's happy. She just says that when she's happy.
Speaker 2: She loves saying I'm unhappy to mean I'm happy.
Speaker 3: She's just so beautiful you can't tell, but she's unhappy.
Speaker 2: Classic Sophie. So that piece from the Nation that I've
Speaker 2: been quoting from outline some of the weirdness around this
Speaker 2: oil deal for what's going to become the biggest oil
Speaker 2: field in the world. Number one Daisy Bradford quote. As
Speaker 2: a matter of mysterious fact, he Hunt wound up with
Speaker 2: most of the land Joiners started with. Nobody has ever
Speaker 2: figured out how he did it. Hunt says it was simple.
Speaker 2: He paid one million dollars but joined or died with
Speaker 2: little money and the almost uncut countable riches Hunt is
Speaker 2: taken from Joyner's old land has turned some Texas oilmen
Speaker 2: sour on him. So basically, people are pretty sure Hunt
Speaker 2: did something to screw Joiner out of a lot of
Speaker 2: money and like kind of ruin him. But we don't
Speaker 2: know that that happened. Joyner might have just squandered it. Right,
Speaker 2: some of those oilmen might have had sour grapes. That said,
Speaker 2: I think there's a pretty good chance Hunt fucks this
Speaker 2: guy like he does not have being great with his
Speaker 2: business partners. Yeah, exactly, he fucks everything else.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: That said, all these other oil guys probably do have
Speaker 2: sour grapes because Hunt is not just a good oil man.
Speaker 2: He is the best oil man of like the first
Speaker 2: big oil boom, he is the best at this by
Speaker 2: a huge margin. He starts making money handover fist not
Speaker 2: long after this point, and this is the end of
Speaker 2: his boom and bust cycles. He will never be poor again.
Speaker 2: He will never be out of money again. This well
Speaker 2: makes so much money that he's able to buy up
Speaker 2: more oil wells. He eventually owns hundreds of oil wells,
Speaker 2: more than five I forget the exact number, but he
Speaker 2: owns so many fucking oil wells and somebody that he
Speaker 2: accumulates an almost impossible seeming percentage of the US oil market.
Speaker 2: He lives in Tyler, Texas during this period where he
Speaker 2: was noted by others. Is he's like, This is when
Speaker 2: he's starting to really get rich as a he's a loaner, right.
Speaker 2: He doesn't like to the oil well guys, the guys
Speaker 2: who are like working on these wildcat rigs and stuff
Speaker 2: like socialized, like to party, like to go out and drink.
Speaker 2: He doesn't socialize with any of his colleagues or any
Speaker 2: of his subordinates. He doesn't like to know them. He
Speaker 2: likes to work. He spends his free time doing extra
Speaker 2: work in his office indoors, not outside. He prefers making
Speaker 2: deals to doing any labor on any of the claims
Speaker 2: that he owns. The son of one of his business
Speaker 2: partners at the time recalled mister Hunt never forgot anything
Speaker 2: map statistics, least data, He's never forgot. So he's got this.
Speaker 2: He's got this like edetic memory, I think is the
Speaker 2: term for it, right where he just he just doesn't
Speaker 2: forget things. Hunt has had to abandon his family at
Speaker 2: least twice to get to this point, but by now
Speaker 2: he has finally made it, and as the nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: turned into the nineteen forties, he is making money hand
Speaker 2: over fist. Now the case made in that article in
Speaker 2: the Nation, which is the best explanation I've seen anyone
Speaker 2: give as for why Hunt succeeds so far. Hard goes
Speaker 2: like this. He never stops gambling, and that's what works
Speaker 2: for him. Ultimately, his whole driving intellectual justification for his
Speaker 2: business practices is the law of averages. He thinks about
Speaker 2: being an oil speculator the same way he thought about
Speaker 2: playing poker. As Hunt himself said, quote, an element of
Speaker 2: luck is important when you first get started in the business.
Speaker 2: If you don't get a well fast. You can't accumulate
Speaker 2: the capital to start operating on a large enough scale.
Speaker 2: But after you start rolling, what you mainly need is
Speaker 2: a thorough knowledge of the laws of chance. A wildcatter
Speaker 2: can expect to bring in one well for every thirty tries,
Speaker 2: and only one man in thirty will do that. If
Speaker 2: you don't have faith in the law of averages, you'll
Speaker 2: probably get discouraged and quit. In my wildcatting days, I've
Speaker 2: drilled one hundred dry wells, one after the other. Then,
Speaker 2: when prospects look most pessimistic, the law of averages would
Speaker 2: go to work for me, just as I figured it would.
Speaker 2: Now that article goes on a note after Hunt's quote.
Speaker 2: The boldness of that statement can be understood only when
Speaker 2: one realizes that a quarter of a million dollars is
Speaker 2: not an unusual cost for wildcatting a single well. So
Speaker 2: when he says he'd have one hundred dry wells in
Speaker 2: a row, each of those dry wells is costing like
Speaker 2: a quarter of a million bucks. That's just wasted. Crazy
Speaker 2: like that. He is gambling. That's why he loves this
Speaker 2: is this is gambling.
Speaker 3: Gambling.
Speaker 2: We're not we're not putting fucking four grand ass down
Speaker 2: on a night of poker. We're putting a quarter of
Speaker 2: a million dollars on one roll of the fucking dice.
Speaker 2: This is his king and he's doing that hundreds of times. Yes, yes, absolutely,
Speaker 2: mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It's so bizarre. I also just I guess I'm just
Speaker 3: so I can't imagine growing up, you know, poor, having
Speaker 3: that be your origin story, being so casual with risking everything,
Speaker 3: like I just I would just want to be so
Speaker 3: comfortable with my two wives, Like I.
Speaker 2: Think that's part of the key is he doesn't grow
Speaker 2: up poor. He is one of eight kids inherits five grand,
Speaker 2: which is a shitload of money at that point in time, right,
Speaker 2: that's a that's a comfortable inheritance. His dad is a
Speaker 2: five hundred acre farm. They are not poor because.
Speaker 3: But he wants to have that message from sulf.
Speaker 2: Right right, Like I am in that kind of boat
Speaker 2: where like I didn't grow up we certainly weren't dirt poor,
Speaker 2: we were never missing meals, but like my earliest memories
Speaker 2: are all of financial anxiety because like my mom tried
Speaker 2: to start a business and then another and they both
Speaker 2: failed and we went fucking broke. You know, our aunt
Speaker 2: and uncle who were like business partners, went bankrupt. Like
Speaker 2: it was my dad had to leave for like almost
Speaker 2: two years to work in New York because it was
Speaker 2: the only place he could get a job and that
Speaker 2: wasn't our house. And once I started making money, I
Speaker 2: don't gamble like, I don't gamble, and I don't like
Speaker 2: invest in crazy shit like I'm really conservative with like
Speaker 2: in my investments and like finances like saving for retirement.
Speaker 2: I am very risk averse because I don't want to
Speaker 2: be scared about money again because I spend a lot
Speaker 2: of my life scared about money. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I used to even make fun of my mom's because
Speaker 3: she would do like the lotto tickets every day, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, mom, Mom, why you're doing it? Just save
Speaker 3: for money, give me it, give me the money, I'll
Speaker 3: save it.
Speaker 2: Yeah I yeah. So again, I think that he's like
Speaker 2: this in part because he doesn't grow poor, right, so
Speaker 2: he also has a superpower, so he knows he can
Speaker 2: always make more money gambling, which I think really helps too.
Speaker 2: That said, you know, obviously this doesn't work smoothly or perfectly.
Speaker 2: Hunt has his ups and downs, but the ups out
Speaker 2: number the downs to such an extent that by the
Speaker 2: time the US enters World War two. This is the
Speaker 2: craziest fact. You want to know, how rich this guy is,
Speaker 2: how big a deal he is in the oil and
Speaker 2: gas industry at the start of World World War two,
Speaker 2: At the start when the US enters World War two,
Speaker 2: hl Hunt personally owns more oil reserves than all of
Speaker 2: the Axis powers put together. Jesus, Like, if you just
Speaker 2: want to, if you want to, like little hint about
Speaker 2: by the time the US enters how fucked the axises
Speaker 2: from the start of that portion of World War two,
Speaker 2: one guy in the US has more oil than all
Speaker 2: of the Axis powers have access to. One guy. They
Speaker 2: were once that like they could never have won. What's
Speaker 2: the US got involved? Like when you let the US
Speaker 2: and Russia so like all of the money and resources
Speaker 2: and all of the people, like you're like, these people
Speaker 2: were so fucking fucked. Hl Hunt has more oil than
Speaker 2: all of your asses.
Speaker 3: Just drop him on the floor, just like we we
Speaker 3: have a we have a hunt.
Speaker 2: It's we've got our fucking hunt. Yeah. Now that all showed,
Speaker 2: by the way, should answer the question. I shouldn't have
Speaker 2: to explain at this point, how did this guy become
Speaker 2: the richest man in the world. When World War two started,
Speaker 2: he owned all of the oil. How do you think
Speaker 2: that for him? Yeah, that's my business. Hack advice is
Speaker 2: own all of the oil on earth when a world
Speaker 2: war starts.
Speaker 3: Write that down everyone.
Speaker 2: Like that'll well when that world war starts. Might not
Speaker 2: help you the same way if a third one kicks off, folks.
Speaker 2: So I would be remiss if I didn't point out, though,
Speaker 2: that owning the most productive oil wells on Earth during
Speaker 2: World War Two was not Hunt's only business. In the
Speaker 2: early to mid nineteen forties. His FBI file notes that
Speaker 2: as of nineteen forty three, he was alleged to be
Speaker 2: the operator of a private horse race and gambling bookie
Speaker 2: establishment near his office in Dallas. So he continues running
Speaker 2: a casino, But at this point it's just for fun, right,
Speaker 2: it's love of the game. He has his money like
Speaker 2: vibes like he absolutely and he'll get in trouble a
Speaker 2: couple of times. There'll be some like investigations because he
Speaker 2: stays involved in a lot of illegal gambling stuff as
Speaker 2: an adult. He'll nearly get in trouble a couple of times,
Speaker 2: but it's just for it's just for shits and giggles
Speaker 2: at this stage. Now, obviously up to this point, this
Speaker 2: is like a dude who I don't think is very pleasant,
Speaker 2: but there's not enough to make him a bastard. You know,
Speaker 2: at this stage in the oil and gas industry, he
Speaker 2: doesn't know about climate change. That's certainly not like the
Speaker 2: widespread scientific consensus. So he can't really get him on that.
Speaker 2: He hasn't done anything. He's a shitty dad, and he's
Speaker 2: bigamously married, and those are bad things, but on its own.
Speaker 2: I don't do it behind the bastards just because a
Speaker 2: guy's got a shitty personal life. So now we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about this stuff that makes him earn his
Speaker 2: way onto the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm nervous because it's World War two time.
Speaker 3: I know, nervous.
Speaker 2: You know, he's you get the he's a he's firmly
Speaker 2: right wing by the time World War two starts. I
Speaker 2: haven't seen any allegations of pro Nazi sentiment, but he's
Speaker 2: anti intervention at the start of the war and opposes
Speaker 2: US entry into the war right, which suggests to me
Speaker 2: maybe some mid sympathy there. Yeah, that said, once the
Speaker 2: war starts, he realizes that because of the way oil
Speaker 2: depletion allowances work in tax laws. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: explain this in detail because I don't know much about taxes,
Speaker 2: but it's this thing that, because of the way it works,
Speaker 2: you can kind of not pay taxes at all if
Speaker 2: you're an oil man in a specific way. Right. Per
Speaker 2: his biographer, Hunt began to realize that maybe he had
Speaker 2: been a trifle hasty and opposing American intervention. So basically
Speaker 2: he's like, wait, a secon, I can sell all of
Speaker 2: the oil to the Allied Powers and I don't have
Speaker 2: to pay taxes on it. No. World War two sounds great.
Speaker 3: I canna make this sark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, make as many Shermans as you guys want one
Speaker 2: of those things to get half a mile to the gallon. Awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 2: keep rolling those fuckers off the line. So his big
Speaker 2: fear though, during this period of time, is that his son, Hassey,
Speaker 2: now twenty two years old, might get drafted.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: He doesn't want his boy, his namesake, to go to
Speaker 2: war and die. So he works out a deal with
Speaker 2: the US government because you know, Hassei's got to serve
Speaker 2: you know, their draft and everyone they can. So his
Speaker 2: son gets joins the army and gets commissioned immediately as
Speaker 2: a second lieutenant, right, which is not like I mean
Speaker 2: that some people do join in our commission immediately, the
Speaker 2: second lieutenants and stuff. That's how you start if you're
Speaker 2: like an officer. But his son specifically gets commissioned because
Speaker 2: of who his dad is and the job a very
Speaker 2: nepo baby thing, and he doesn't want to be a
Speaker 2: Nepo baby. By this point in time, Hasse has already
Speaker 2: established himself independently as a successful oil man, like a
Speaker 2: separate from his dad, and he hates his dad, and
Speaker 2: he really does not want to be associated with his father,
Speaker 2: and his dad forces him by working with the government,
Speaker 2: forces him into the situation that now he's made to
Speaker 2: join the army and he's made to take a job
Speaker 2: with the army where he's working in DC and he's
Speaker 2: basically advising the leader of China's nationalist faction during their
Speaker 2: civil war. So he's like working with Chang Kai Shek's
Speaker 2: guys specifically, I think on like oil, a lot of
Speaker 2: oil related stuff. And he's doing this because his dad
Speaker 2: makes this job for him. He doesn't want this job,
Speaker 2: and he's really unhappy to be forced to once again
Speaker 2: live in his dad's shadow. This like fucks him up
Speaker 2: a lot. In the book Kingdom to sell rights about
Speaker 2: how Hasse has the op This is the like, if
Speaker 2: he'd wanted to, this would have been a great opportunity,
Speaker 2: if he enjoyed being an EPO baby, to spend the
Speaker 2: war partying and hitting on all the hot ladies who
Speaker 2: are lonely because the men are gone. That's how to
Speaker 2: sell rights. And then he adds this just yet another
Speaker 2: fascinating passage from his biography. The variety of females was
Speaker 2: enhanced by the Chinese Nationalist government, which staffed its embassy
Speaker 2: heavily with new bile young beauties from the Asian mainland.
Speaker 2: Willing young females have always been one of the Earth's
Speaker 2: most readily accepted forms of currency, and currency was required
Speaker 2: to purchase power and influence. Gee, the gross gross Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not wrong. I'm sure the Chinese Nationalist government did
Speaker 2: staff their embassy with hotties because they know that that
Speaker 2: allows them to like you can use hot girls to
Speaker 2: help you spy on people, and you can use them
Speaker 2: to gain black male stuff. But like, that's a gross
Speaker 2: way to write that. Also, the variety of females. Yes,
Speaker 2: he always uses females.
Speaker 3: Female.
Speaker 2: It's weird. It's weird to sell. It's weird. So but
Speaker 2: you know, I don't doubt also that like that is
Speaker 2: basically what's going on, right. Hasse is very unhappy, uh,
Speaker 2: in this situation. He had been starting again, he'd been
Speaker 2: living independently, he was like starting to succeed on his own,
Speaker 2: and then his dad uses the US government to trap
Speaker 2: him and force him to take the job his dad
Speaker 2: wants him to have, like it's the most controlling thing
Speaker 2: that you could possibly do as a father. And this
Speaker 2: is very in line with how he is as a dad.
Speaker 2: He's never there and he never provides any emotional support.
Speaker 2: But he also has a very idea of what he
Speaker 2: wants his namesake to do for a living, and he
Speaker 2: will like berate him and scream at him anytime he
Speaker 2: does anything different or anytime he falls short. And now
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, you want to live independently into your
Speaker 2: own thing, No, fuck you, You're taking this job that
Speaker 2: I've made the government give you, and you're gonna do it.
Speaker 2: And Hasse is deeply uncomfortable, and he has what sounds
Speaker 2: like a psychotic break one night after a party at
Speaker 2: the Chinese Embassy and flies into a violent rage, destroying
Speaker 2: all of the furniture in the room and like fighting people,
Speaker 2: And when hotel staff approach him, he starts screaming, I've
Speaker 2: been betrayed, betrayed by the Rockefellers, betrayed by my father's enemies.
Speaker 2: They're all out to get me. So maybe it's kind
Speaker 2: of hard. I don't know what's going on with him.
Speaker 2: It may have been like paranoid schizophrenia, because he's like
Speaker 2: never going to get better. He's mentally ill. The rest
Speaker 2: of his bad broke him, He broke his boy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 1: Love that the Rockefellers come up that way all the time,
Speaker 1: betrayed by the rock.
Speaker 3: That's what I was laughing at a scene.
Speaker 2: Of every crime. But in this case they are literally
Speaker 2: in play.
Speaker 3: But I love it. I do love how it's like
Speaker 3: they have like that his son ends up doing like
Speaker 3: a rival oil company, the same way like his brother
Speaker 3: and his dad had the rival banks. It's just like
Speaker 3: fathers and sons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great succession exactly.
Speaker 3: It's so Murdoch coded the way that he very much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna absorb you into the coalition. Whether you
Speaker 3: want to be independent or not. It's so Murdoch.
Speaker 2: Oh, you don't have any choice in this. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: he winds up, hass He winds up in a military hospital,
Speaker 2: and when his dad comes for a visit hasse he
Speaker 2: like charges him and tries to beat him up.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 2: He basically rushes his dad. As soon as his dad
Speaker 2: like walks into the room and tries to assault him,
Speaker 2: he has to be restrained by guards. Hl Hunt tells
Speaker 2: his wife after this, the boy is too high spirited,
Speaker 2: too sensitive. He's always been too sensitive and reckless. Why
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with the jeans in that boy. He
Speaker 2: comes from the finest doc. Problem is is to say
Speaker 2: his jeans are good for me. It's got to be that.
Speaker 2: You know, he made his personality, he made choices to
Speaker 2: be too sensitive. You know, that's what's wrong with him.
Speaker 2: And when he says this, his daughter, Margaret, his oldest child,
Speaker 2: who's there, turns to him and replies, you destroyed hassee
Speaker 2: nobody but you. You've gotten away with a kind of murder,
Speaker 2: and it's time you faced up to.
Speaker 3: That eldest daughter. That right there, that's gods. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: living to the Margaret name. We love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, living up to that Margaret name. And you know
Speaker 2: who else is named Margaret? Not the sponsors of our podcast? Maybe,
Speaker 2: but we don't know. They could be.
Speaker 1: What if it's a promo for cool cool stuff?
Speaker 2: Again, they could be? Could be not impossible, No, no, no.
Speaker 3: Here's it's possible. Be cool mm hm.
Speaker 2: Hm, and we're back south. Speaking of being a great
Speaker 2: parent and husband. Back in nineteen thirty four, Frannia, his
Speaker 2: second wife, had figured out that he had another secret family. Right.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly how, but she finds out that
Speaker 2: they've got another secret family and they drift apart after that.
Speaker 2: She's not happy about this. Per the Texas State Historical Association,
Speaker 2: Hunt apparently shipped her off to New York and in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one provided trusts for each of the four children.
Speaker 2: A friend of his, John Lee, married her and gave
Speaker 2: his name to the children for an idea. He's so
Speaker 2: rich now. When his second family gets pissed and leaves
Speaker 2: an order like hide what he's done, he gets he basically,
Speaker 2: I'm sure, pays his friend to marry the family and
Speaker 2: pretend to be the father of those kids.
Speaker 3: That's so weird.
Speaker 2: Crazy stuff wild. Some people have wild much.
Speaker 3: Money, Like this is like, yeah, you can just be
Speaker 3: a dad. You could just.
Speaker 2: Everyone who's ever been the richest man in the world
Speaker 2: has had too much money. We could start there. Yeah period, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: gross shit. In nineteen forty six, right after the war ended,
Speaker 2: a coal strike hits the East Coast. So there's this
Speaker 2: strike for the same reason people always strike, and it's
Speaker 2: causing this like energy shortage, and Hunt breaks the strike
Speaker 2: by supplying huge amounts of natural gas to the Southwest. Basically,
Speaker 2: you guys don't need coal from these coal miners. I've
Speaker 2: got all of this Union free natural gas. And he
Speaker 2: winds up supplying eighty five percent of the fuel needs
Speaker 2: of the East Coast. Again, he's not surprising that in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty eight, I Think Life magazine names him the
Speaker 2: richest man on Earth. He has an estimated net worth
Speaker 2: of two hundred and sixty three million dollars, which would
Speaker 2: be the equivalent of like three and a half billion
Speaker 2: dollars today. But he can't rest or sit on his laurels.
Speaker 2: The United States was only able to win World War
Speaker 2: Two by partnering with the Communists, and he came to
Speaker 2: believe that a vast conspiracy was at work to destroy
Speaker 2: the United States from the n side, and hl Hunt
Speaker 2: knows a communist uprising would be very bad for hl Hunt, right,
Speaker 2: He really does not want to want to see any
Speaker 2: of that go down. His businesses he doesn't think will
Speaker 2: do well.
Speaker 3: He's like, these are my money, this is my money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Oh, they're not gonna like me. By the
Speaker 2: start of the nineteen fifties, Hunt had figured out his
Speaker 2: own path out of the dangers of socialism. He begins
Speaker 2: on envisioning and sketching out the dimensions of his ideal
Speaker 2: utopian state, which is this kind of like dream libertarian
Speaker 2: capitalist republic where votes are assigned in elections based on
Speaker 2: how much you pay in taxes. That's the primary thing
Speaker 2: that determines how many votes you get. Yeah, we'll talk
Speaker 2: more about that later. Some might call an idea like
Speaker 2: this fascism adjacent, but Hunt doesn't care. His life has
Speaker 2: taught him that reality would mold to fit whatever he wants,
Speaker 2: so he decides to brute force his dream utopia into being.
Speaker 2: He's going to like make America become this country is
Speaker 2: very much like a proto Peter Teel type. He has
Speaker 2: this dream after he gets rich of how to reorganize
Speaker 2: society so that he doesn't have to listen to anyone else,
Speaker 2: and he then begins putting his money into supporting a
Speaker 2: variety of causes and making media that will convince all
Speaker 2: of the dummies who with everyone else in the United
Speaker 2: States that what he wants is best for everybody. He
Speaker 2: becomes a vocal supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who he
Speaker 2: saw as a patriot protecting the nation from a vast
Speaker 2: cabal of secret Communist agents who had infiltrated every level
Speaker 2: of society. Hunt decides to fight back against this, you know,
Speaker 2: left wing infiltration of all of our cultural and social
Speaker 2: governmental organs by funding one of the first explicitly right
Speaker 2: wing media organizations in the country, The Facts Forum, founded
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty one, was immediately the best funded propaganda
Speaker 2: outlet in the United States. On paper, the Facts Forum
Speaker 2: was nonpartisan and educational. It has to be nonpartisan, it
Speaker 2: has to be.
Speaker 3: The country, right, We just care about baby, just.
Speaker 2: Fact and education. Because if you're if you're nonpartisan, if
Speaker 2: you're balanced and educational, then your content, your your radio
Speaker 2: and television is tax exempt. Right You don't have to
Speaker 2: pay taxes on. Basically, you get a tax right off
Speaker 2: for whatever you put into the media, which will allow
Speaker 2: Hunt to not pay taxes. Right. That's the big benefit
Speaker 2: of this is that it doesn't actually cost him money.
Speaker 2: The money that he spends on this is basically what
Speaker 2: he does instead of paying taxes because of how the
Speaker 2: tax system works. So his choice is basically either pay
Speaker 2: taxes and fund like society or put it all into
Speaker 2: right wing propaganda. And he's like, well, I would much
Speaker 2: rather put it all on the right wing propaganda on red. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In one early letter, Hunt describes the vision behind the
Speaker 2: Facts Forum as a kind of projection of the old
Speaker 2: New England town hall meeting idea we have no ax
Speaker 2: to grind and no funds to raise. Now that last
Speaker 2: bit was tactically true. He was the richest man in
Speaker 2: the world. He does not beg for donations, right, But
Speaker 2: he does beg his listeners to organize in person, advising
Speaker 2: them to set up discussion groups from seven to forty
Speaker 2: two members and like read books together and talk about
Speaker 2: the ideas that he's putting out through the show. And
Speaker 2: in doing this and suggesting this, he's cripping off of
Speaker 2: what he understood is the playbook the Bolsheviks had used
Speaker 2: to take power. If you listen to that, there's always
Speaker 2: like reading groups, like socialist reading groups all throughout the
Speaker 2: Russian the like Czarist Russia that wind up being the
Speaker 2: core of all, not just the Bolsheviks, all of these
Speaker 2: different like left wing revolutionary groups right the start. A
Speaker 2: lot of them start as book clubs. And he's very
Speaker 2: much and a lot of anti communists in this era
Speaker 2: post World War two, like that's the John Burt Society too,
Speaker 2: is like, what if we take the tactics these leftists
Speaker 2: are using, but we turn it towards basically pro fascist bullshit?
Speaker 3: Right, what do we give them the books that we
Speaker 3: like and we yeah, never read our.
Speaker 2: Book, and right, maybe we can make people be like,
Speaker 2: you know, violent militant revolutionaries in favor of us not
Speaker 2: paying taxes. Yeah. So the Facts Forum has a membership
Speaker 2: list and a newsletter which was free to be outright
Speaker 2: partisan in a way that the radio show could not
Speaker 2: that for whatever reason, the newspapers and stuff that he
Speaker 2: puts out don't have to abide by any of these rules.
Speaker 2: Every three weeks, members were polled on current affairs and
Speaker 2: the results. This is really interesting to me that he
Speaker 2: figures this out. Is he has his membership answer polls
Speaker 2: that he writes, and then he sends the results to
Speaker 2: newspapers as if they're real polls that are evidence of
Speaker 2: like how Americans feel about issues, and a lot of
Speaker 2: newspapers publish this as if it's the news, as if
Speaker 2: these polls are like represent how Americans feel about things,
Speaker 2: as opposed to what Hunt's really doing. Because he's coming
Speaker 2: up with the polls and it's his set group of
Speaker 2: people who are answering them. This is a way of
Speaker 2: laundering his talking points and what he leaves about politics
Speaker 2: into the mainstream media and disguise that as no, no,
Speaker 2: this is just how the masses feel, right, this is
Speaker 2: how the average American feels. This isn't just h l
Speaker 2: Hunt's opinion.
Speaker 3: Obviously, right, And then he can also present himself as
Speaker 3: like I'm not getting anything out of this. I'm just
Speaker 3: trying to inform people about how everything is going on.
Speaker 2: He's just helping what Americans think, right, And this is
Speaker 2: a major propaganda thing today. A lot of people do
Speaker 2: this now. Hunt is very much like a trailblazer in this.
Speaker 2: He made His thinking on how this worked very clear
Speaker 2: in a pamphlet published by the Facts Forum. What you
Speaker 2: believe in, say, is public opinion. Public opinion is a constant,
Speaker 2: im mutable force which can be altered or changed only
Speaker 2: by itself. I don't like him when you're literally writing
Speaker 2: public opinion. Yeah. Interesting, So from the jump, the only
Speaker 2: opinion Hunts interested in was his own. He is not
Speaker 2: organizing with other conservatives because he's special.
Speaker 3: Right, He's got the bestus ever, He's got all that
Speaker 3: absolute milk.
Speaker 2: Than you've got. But this is interesting. He's not like
Speaker 2: you know a lot of like these modern conservative groups
Speaker 2: are funded by multiple people, and you have like groups
Speaker 2: coming together to fund these organizations that have their own
Speaker 2: thinkers in them too, who have like their own and
Speaker 2: they're all pushing an agenda. But it's like an agenda
Speaker 2: that's a mix of multiple people like working together. Hunt's
Speaker 2: propaganda is just Hunt. He does not talk to anyone else.
Speaker 2: He doesn't organize with anyone else because he doesn't need to.
Speaker 2: He hates people. Right, He is not interested in the
Speaker 2: Facts Forum being a place where other conservatives can express
Speaker 2: their opinions. Right, it exists, so hl Hunt can convince
Speaker 2: Americans to adopt his politics because his belief, it's almost
Speaker 2: a religious belief to him, is that he's so right
Speaker 2: about everything that if everyone just hears what he believes,
Speaker 2: everyone will adopt his political beliefs immediately. Obviously, the narcissism
Speaker 2: now the only issue for Hunt, and the reason this
Speaker 2: is a problem when he's starts creating radio and TV
Speaker 2: propaganda is that he's terrified of public speaking. He hates
Speaker 2: talking to people. He doesn't he has no charisma, and
Speaker 2: he knows it. So he picks a spokesman.
Speaker 1: Interesting, the man who apparently is so unbelievably fuckable right,
Speaker 1: has no riz.
Speaker 3: He can do. He can make up a sex worker,
Speaker 3: do whatever, but God forbid, has to sell his ideas.
Speaker 2: Can't convince Americans about his tax policies.
Speaker 1: He's like, He's like, yeah, I'm a certified tex God
Speaker 1: cannot put a sentence together.
Speaker 2: Public cannot put a sentence together, can't talk in front
Speaker 2: of a crowd.
Speaker 3: I was like a helicopter while telling you about my
Speaker 3: tax policy. It's just not gonna write.
Speaker 2: I'll write it on my dick. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: So he picks a spokesman, Dan Smoot, and I don't
Speaker 2: have time to do a BTV on Dan Smoot, but
Speaker 2: he's he deserves one. Smoot was orphaned at ten years
Speaker 2: old and then as a young adult is rejected by
Speaker 2: the army for medical reasons at the start of World
Speaker 2: War Two, and so he joins the FBI in order
Speaker 2: to serve his country that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: He's in the FBI until nineteen fifty one when he
Speaker 2: resigns to work for Hunt. And What's Fair on.
Speaker 1: The work Greasy Wheel would call a side bastard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's definitely a sid. So in What's Fair on
Speaker 2: the Air had the hindershot rights of Smoot. He was
Speaker 2: willing to temper his arch conservatism by giving two sides
Speaker 2: to the political issues discussed. So that's like a major thing.
Speaker 2: Smoot has to be able to pretend to want to
Speaker 2: discuss fairly what the other side believes. Now, his face
Speaker 2: and his vote, it's always clear what he actually believes
Speaker 2: and what he doesn't like saying. But as long as
Speaker 2: he says it, that's all that matters. Now, these were
Speaker 2: still the days in which the fairness doctrine held sway.
Speaker 2: The fairness doctrine is a nineteen forty nine FCC policy
Speaker 2: that required broadcast license holders to present controversial issues in
Speaker 2: a matter that fairly depicted differing views. Individual shows didn't
Speaker 2: have to abide by this, but license holders did. So
Speaker 2: if you have a right wing show, you're supposed to
Speaker 2: have like a left wing show too, right, And because
Speaker 2: that's very expensive, networks are always looking for balanced news
Speaker 2: programs to fill the air where you don't have to
Speaker 2: have a second one to counteract the bias of the
Speaker 2: first one. Right, So this is they're always desperate for
Speaker 2: balanced content, and the fact that his Hunt is making
Speaker 2: this and giving it to networks for free makes it
Speaker 2: really attractive to them, like they're going to give it
Speaker 2: free airtime because it's free. In nineteen fifty one, the
Speaker 2: Facts Forum benefited from about five million per year in
Speaker 2: free public service airtime. And again I think there's tax
Speaker 2: benefits to the networks for running balanced educational content too,
Speaker 2: so that's also makes this attractive to them. One estimate
Speaker 2: I've seen is that in nineteen fifty four, Hunt benefited
Speaker 2: from the modern day equivalent of half a billion dollars
Speaker 2: a year in free airtime, which is the calculations that
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, in that election Trump got about a
Speaker 2: billion dollars in free airtime just in terms of like
Speaker 2: because of how like many how much coverage the news
Speaker 2: gave everything, he said, So the fact that Hunt's getting
Speaker 2: half a billion a year for that for years is significant.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of free airtime, right, It's about twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand hours a free right wing propaganda on the
Speaker 2: radio and TV per year that's marketed and billed as nonpartisan.
Speaker 3: Interesting, he crossed fire energy. It's like we're just having
Speaker 3: a conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's invented Fox News. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. His
Speaker 2: shows all air on struggling networks that need free content,
Speaker 2: which at that point meant the Mutual Radio Network and ABC.
Speaker 2: This quote from What's Fair on the Air gives you
Speaker 2: a good idea of how episodes of Facts Forum tend
Speaker 2: to go. One episode of Facts for Him asked whether
Speaker 2: those advocating the violent overthrow of the US government should
Speaker 2: be subject to the death penalty. On the pro side,
Speaker 2: the answer was yes, of course, such a conspiracy was
Speaker 2: worse than murder. On the con side, the argument was
Speaker 2: that such conspirators were only dupes or communist sympathizers. Dangerous, Yes,
Speaker 2: but those were just misguided pawns whose civil rights should
Speaker 2: be respected. Bus As one critic described it, a negative
Speaker 2: argument against the death penalty for communist conspirators turns into
Speaker 2: a positive affirmation that nation is in imminent danger of
Speaker 2: collapse from subversion, a favorite Facts Forum thesis. Right. So,
Speaker 2: that's how, even though they're kind of pretending that this
Speaker 2: is non biased, everyone, even the left wing argument pushes
Speaker 2: a right wing narrative. And there are critics who noticed
Speaker 2: this at the time. In nineteen fifty four, bin Bagdikian,
Speaker 2: which is a real name, wrote a takedown of the
Speaker 2: Facts Forum, Yeah, complaining that when it used the terms
Speaker 2: pro Soviet and Unamerican, it meant quote. Those terms include
Speaker 2: the Roosevelt and Truman administrations and the people who supported them,
Speaker 2: Right so, Yeah, and when it refers to American freedom,
Speaker 2: the show means, among other things, a total absence of
Speaker 2: government regulation in business and a withdrawal from the United Nations.
Speaker 2: They're referring to. These things is things everyone believes and
Speaker 2: believes and agrees with, even though they're very much not right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And we'll talk more about these his shows, the Facts Forum,
Speaker 2: the shows that follow that, and Hunt's bizarre personal life
Speaker 2: and the things he comes to believe about health and wellness.
Speaker 2: But I think that's all we've got for part two,
Speaker 2: so I'm guessing it's gonna have to be a three parter. Princess,
Speaker 2: how are you feeling at the end of this?
Speaker 3: I'm so ready. I want to know more about this guy.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm watching the origin of so much evil.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, good stuff, everybody, good stuff. So that's that's it, everybody,
Speaker 2: We're done for the day. Why don't you go? And uh,
Speaker 2: I don't know. Love yourself, touch grass, love yourself, love me, love.
Speaker 3: Someone else, love your two families, yeah or four.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
Speaker 1: dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes,
Speaker 1: but Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping
Speaker 1: every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me of Netflix. You
Speaker 1: don't miss an episode. For clips in our older episode catalog,
Speaker 1: continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel YouTube dot com
Speaker 1: slash at Behind the Bastards. We love about forty percent
Speaker 1: of you. Statistically, speaking